Chomsky praises him, saying he was vilified, but he was crucial to making change. Two years ago, the New York Times published an excellent transcript of his final sermon, annotated by Nikita Stewart to clarify the events that provoked some of his words. It’s his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: Chomsky’s Optimism: On Climate Change, Nuclear War, and Activism
Truthdig‘s Scheer Intelligence series, hosted by Robert Scheer, recently posted a 3 hour podcast in two parts. I’ve summarized the gist of what Chomsky says below, in about a 15 minute read, with a few of my own thoughts and links added to the mix. You can listen to the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: How to Be a Good Citizen
This is a Twitter thread, but I want to save it, so I’m putting it here. It’s by Elle Maruska. (Here’s her Patreon and Ko-Fi, whatever that is.) “Here are some things you can do that, while maybe won’t change the world will help you become more effective as a progressive
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Age of Oblivion, Part 2
Chomsky has said, over and over, that the two things we should be worried about are climate change and nuclear war. We’re doing well at exacerbating both! Our obliviousness to these catalyses of catastrophe will propel us into total oblivion. Defense stock is up, though. Hedges on Iran: “The strike
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Age of Oblivion: Another End of Decade Rant
Of course calendars are a construct and don’t mean anything, but the end of the year and, even more so, the end of the decade are useful times to take stock. In pop culture, we have the Ecco Homo moment as a cultural foreboding – the chutzpah to insist on a fix that pretends
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Game Changers: A Bit about Persuasion and Reason and Eating Your Vegetables
I’ve come to believe that determining the very best diet is as individual as figuring out the best course of action to treat anxiety or depression. We are each our own guinea pig. Individually, we each have to try a few things, gradually, while monitoring our energy levels, abilities, and
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Pre-COP25 Panel of Speakers
A headache kept me home from work today, so I got some fresh air and checked out the climate strike. It was great timing for the strike, on Black Friday, with COP 25 starting in Chile three days from now. It’s a really hard sell to get a protest going
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Greatest Propaganda Machine in History
Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G. and Borat, among others) won an award from the Anti-Defamation League. Here’s his 25 minute acceptance speech. It’s in writing, abridged a bit, below the video if you’d rather skim than watch. (Emphasis is mine.) “Today, around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Gen Z for Zero, Net Zero
Mia Rabson reports, “A baby born in Canada today will never know a time in which his or her health isn’t at risk from a warming planet . . . Without accelerated intervention, this new era will come to define the health of people at every stage of their lives.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Developing a Consistent Self
In a New York Times article, “What do teens learn online today?“, Elizabeth Weil suggests that kids are on the right track when they stream every inch of their anguish and joys in countless video tutorials aimed at, perhaps a necessary clarification, other teens. Weil says, “It’s nice if our fellow
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Paul Gorski on Education and Inequity
For the first time in 28 years of teaching, I approve of the new guru being brought to the masses from on high. Immediately, from just the first few seconds of the video we were compelled to watch for some force-fed professional development, I knew this guy was different. The sound was
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Kyle Whyte on Wilderness
I saw Dr. Kyle Whyte present at the University of Waterloo on Thursday night on climate change, traditional knowledge, and environmental justice. It was similar to what he said in this video, but longer and with a Q&A at the end. It was eye-opening in the worst way – in
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Cycling Rant
If cycling is part of your life, it looks like the NDP comes way ahead in terms of addressing cycling concerns. Extinction Rebellion is clear about the need for car-free streets as part of action to decrease the threats of climate change. And even my city claims to be moving
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: LIberals the Best Bet for Climate Change
A climate scientists, Katharine Hayhoe, and economist, Andrew Leach, seem to suggest that the Liberals are our best bet for tackling climate change if you averages the grades they gave for ambition and feasibility. I know! I was surprised too. Here are their final grades: Conservatives: grade D for ambition,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Online Predators
From Keller & Dance’s article, ‘The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?“ Some of the less brutal bits: “An investigation by The New York Times found an insatiable criminal underworld that had exploited the flawed and insufficient efforts to contain it. As with hate
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Like a Good Horror Film?
Most terrifying thing I’ve seen: We’re headed for 10 degrees in the next 20-30 years, and we will hit human extinction at 4 degrees?? Do I even bother to go to work today?? We’ve missed the window that could allow a gentle reversal. The only solution, he says, is to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Lesser of Two Evils
This is a great interview with Trudeau that asks all the important questions:
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Why We Won’t Sufficate
…even if the entire rainforest burns down: Hank Green explains it here in just four minutes:
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Mann’s Madhouse Effect
Michael Mann recently tweeted this: It’s dumb luck that I chanced to do just that! This book a comprehensive exploration of the issues mixed with clear examples and Tom Toles’s cartoons. It could easily be used as a climate change primer in a high school or middle school, and it
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth
This is a quick read outlining the history of the efforts to do something to slow down fossil fuel use. Everything we know now about climate change, pretty much, we knew with great certainty forty years ago, in 1979. “The climate scientist James Hansen has called a 2-degree warming ‘a
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